Through The Stars
by Pookie Sanchez
Summary: Follows the deaths of some of BSG's best.
1. Through The Stars

Note: Chapter 1 is the most confusing of the entire story. The story has already been written in its entirety so there will be no worries of yet another half finished fanfic. Enjoy and please review.

Chapter 1: Through The Stars

The instance of death is simple. Your body reaches its peak then stops. Doesn't matter if the cause is old age, disease or accident; the instance is still the same.

The process is different.

I died in a hospital bed. The instant was quick. My body reached its peak ability to heal and systematically shut down. I was gone far before anyone suspected; my wife was asleep in a chair beside me.

My soul stumbled with the grace of a newborn lamb through the mortal realm, unknowingly producing havoc in its need to reach another soul. There were those murmurings of seeming madness; universal truths with no qualitative meaning to the living. Unable to see my peers I tried to feel them, or rather their souls. The need to feel them drove me near obsession.

I became a soul, my body still processed in the mortal realm but I had become a soul free of a body. Sometimes I would feel a gentle soul grace my presence. It would reach deep within me to calm my turmoil. Sometimes I would feel intolerable spirits. These would feed into my own hatred; the vile jealousy that plagued me in the living flesh.

These confrontations would be too much to bear at times. I could see the darkness, I remembered the darkness of space but this was real darkness. A soul trapped in its flesh fighting to escape to become its own being, almost at the opposition of its owner; sometimes simply _to_ oppose its owner.

The most frightening are the souls that are hell bent on overtaking others. They don't rest, ever. They try to disguise themselves, they're good. Even I don't always recognize them. They approach calmingly with a tough that makes one trust. They stay in this form for minutes, hours, day, until their shell cracks and falls away.

Sometimes, though I'm sure must be other beings in the room with me, I feel no souls.

I could never identify people. This drove me from calm to restless constantly. I wanted to feel my wife. I was concerned she may have been one of the Darkness. I didn't want this to be true. The beautiful young woman I married, she couldn't be Darkness.

I couldn't distinguish between cylon and human either. At the time I drew no conclusions of this. Now I would conclude that there must be one and only God. The God of the cylon and the God of the human are one and the same. The cylons' very existence would not be possible without God. Our awareness of self, human drive; God made us to be the same. The wrapping may have been different but everything else was exactly the same.

For what seemed centuries I rested, I screamed, I reached, I was rejected. From time to time I would receive a message from the Galactica; the most fractured soul I'd felt, very pure, very confused, poorly developed. It let me know where I was. Occasionally it allowed me to catch glimpse of the integrated fractures of souls amongst a torn battlestar; battered Frontline Warriors.

Though they were fractured in psych, they knew who they were. Others were unaware of purpose, names, and labels. The confusion became unbearable. Everyday I became more lost until I was unable to murmur truths. I lay within myself seeking an exit from confusion.

Then as suddenly as I had died, the noise ended. I searched for a nearby soul and found one mirroring my own. It, unlike the others, knew where I should go.

Me, my soul, muttered one last sentence and in one fatal instance the fractured souls of the Frontline followed me through the stars to free ourselves of the confusion.


	2. Traveling

Chapter 2: Traveling

My death was violent and insignificant. The fiery crash of my viper was but one speck in a universe full of chaos. Though it would have been so much easier, my soul refused to be released of its body.

I was ready to go, it was not.

As I prepared to pass though the stars, ready to cross, I was pulled back. The confusion of noise and light subsided and in the dead of space I was reborn. My days as the walking dead can only be described as incredible. Months passed, cylon battles came and went. Emotions, turmoil, blood; but none of it felt real.

The only time I felt alive was when I felt tortured. Curled up on the grated floor of the Demetrius, swearing bullets, looking for my vision to find Earth I may have screamed to the Gods to help but I knew they had forsaken me. I was left to my own to travel through the mortal realm and find my way home.

I guess that wasn't really the point. It wasn't about me, it was about them; the 30,000 or so souls that could still be saved. So why give the responsibility to a monumental frak up? Maybe it was my destiny all along or maybe it was the only way the Gods could think to save my own soul.

The day I found my body on Earth, the day Leoben abandoned me, I couldn't accept it. I kept looking for answers from anyplace I could find them, the Scriptures, the tape of my viper crash, even Baltar. I've never been known for my closeness to my crew but on that day I withdrew from everyone. Or maybe they withdrew from me.

When Sam was shot I felt something I hadn't in a long time. It's a feeling difficult to accurately describe but a mixture of longing and connection. It was like I knew it had to happen; in that moment I felt closer to Sam than I ever had to anyone.

I stayed with him in the room. He always had a habit of putting me at east with those beautiful browns. I just didn't wasn't to miss the moment he opened those eyes and told me he loved me.

But that moment never came.

One moment I'll never forget, one that seemed insignificant, occurred late one night. His monitors beeped consistently. Nothing actually happened but I felt a change in the room. I looked around searching for something to explain a sudden chill; then a moment of completeness. The monitors were the same, the room was still, I was wide awake.

I crawled onto the bed with Sam. I put my arm around him and I wept.

The Doc came through momentarily, perhaps by chance, perhaps he heard my crying. He tried to comfort me but all I felt was a turbulence that wasn't my own.

Days went by and everyday I felt more emotional but less alive. Empathy I believe is what the Admiral would have called it. I felt something truly gentle in the Chief and something frightening in Tori.

Before this empathy I already felt crazy. Visions of people, myself, Earth and then all of these emotions. I didn't need to be grounded because I was feeling too many emotions so I just didn't tell anyone. It wasn't a constant occurrence anyway, just moments here and there. Sometimes I would get emotional and sometimes I would maintain my image, kick ass viper pilot with the bad attitude.

The worst was one day visiting Sam. Seeing his body hooked into the Galacitica like some kind of frakking machine. I felt myself reaching out and what I felt scared me. I felt a range of emotions in Sam. I felt overloaded, I needed to cry and scream and laugh.

I should have been relieved. Emotions, proof he was still alive in there right? No.

It was quick, in that instant that I died, From then on I was operating to help my people, cylon included. I spent a lot of time listening to people; their innermost feelings, their true selves. The XO was made of confusion; the Admiral was strong and ultimately good. I could have done more, I suppose, to learn about people but I needed to concentrate on what I was there for.

I opened myself up for guidance from the higher powers. I used it to speak with Hera, that little girl with the pure soul. I still snuck into the dungeon to see Sam. My guilty pleasure was reaching his soul. Feeling him was more than comforting, it was that completeness I knew I needed. His soul, though good, needed mine. Feeling him I knew his soul was tailored for mine; the perfection he'd always spoken of.

Completeness.

But what about Lee?

Truth told, I'd tried to feel him a few times since my death. I could never find it. His soul was elusive, so much so I worried he didn't have one. Even this, however, was secondary to my mission.

Scene Break

We all volunteered for the attack on the cylon home world but only I was unafraid. I worried for them, I still needed my family to make it through safely and I needed to guide their souls. Lead them to their end.

How?

Though my recent experiences had revealed who and what I really was, I wasn't ready for the amount of grief I felt upon Admiral Adama's encouraging words.

_What do you hear? _

_Nothing but the rain._

This would be my last mission. I had hope that I would be awarded more time to help, to see Hera grow into a young adult or pull Lee though Dee's passing but the Gods had decided my fate.

The battle was our salvation. Beneath the bullets and the fear, ran a current of connection. Cylon, human, good and evil; they all found synergy. Instead of the cycle of horror and war they found an alternative; my soul as the connection intermediary, a truce, however short.

Those souls, choosing the less popular alternative route for those few minutes, were saved; the Gods rewrote their fates. The others were lost to the expanding darkness of the Universe.

Now one would think given all the trouble to reincarnate me, the Gods would have given me the coordinates to New Earth in numerical form. Something simple, not the colorful scratching of a child. By the time I interpreted the pattern and input the coordinates we had seconds before being sucked into the black hole.

Souls screamed, the Universe flipped and turned before granting us light.

Scene Break

New Earth was beautiful from both my human eyes and though my soul.

It was laughable, I finally got used to seeing everything through two orbs and it was almost time to leave. I helped guide Laura and Adama to their final point. I reached out to calm Tyrol, he of any of us needed the silence the most. Hera, she needed a childhood; no patterns, no eye on the Universe. With the aid of the Gods I took her ability. Just a childhood.

Lee.

He was my last. I loved him. In my last moments with him, listening to his plans and his desires I felt his soul. The only soul I'd felt that wasn't lacking anything. He didn't need another soul to travel with him. He was whole within himself.

Doomed to be alone for an eternity but he would be happy.

I didn't have time to process this any further before I felt myself drift. I was flesh, a feather and finally light. I was traveling through the barrier to meet my compliment. We needed each other in life and we would need each other on the other side.


End file.
